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Gather Up the Leftovers. Let Nothing Go to Waste.

Americans waste food on a grand scale. Though figures are appalling–30-40% of our food supply gets wasted, by USDA estimates, about 60 million tons a year, worth over $200 billion – big numbers fail to change behavior. First-year students in a seminar I teach on the history of American diet trends are reliably conscientious about…
June 30, 2025
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The Creed and a Christian Worldview

Anniversaries matter. If you’re a cancer survivor, each year of remission offers a fresh lease on life. If you’re married, every annual commemoration of your wedding is an opportunity to recommit to your vows. Your work anniversary may include a bonus or raise. The anniversary of a loved one’s death summons both grief and remembrance.…
June 27, 2025
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How Coaching Youth Sports Helped My Thinking about Christian Character

The most important activity that helped refine my view of character education was not taking classes on epistemology and ethics from Dallas Willard. Nor was it taking all my other Ph.D. classes that addressed virtue or moral development. It was coaching youth league sports. Granted, readings in philosophy, ethics, and theology led me to recognize…
June 25, 2025
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AI and the Grammar of Descent

Recently, there’s been even more press than usual about AI proliferation and its associated risks. The hype has been driven, in part, by the now infamous Ross Douthat interview with Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the A.I. Futures Project, in which Kokotajlo suggests that AI could take over civilization—and “then kill all the humans”—by 2027.…
June 24, 2025

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The Meaning of Dreams: Creation Through Selection

Sidarta Ribeiro, in The Oracle of Night: The History and Science of Dreams, has written a book that artfully blends multiple disciplines of human experience, from sociology to biochemistry, in pursuit of its fundamental question: Why do we dream? Ribeiro argues against the scientific “default” interpretation that dreams are random firings of neurons without meaning.…
December 13, 2021
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Advent Meditation III: Like Calls to Like

Icon of the Visitation https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-visitation-icon-samuel-epperly.html Pantokrator icon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Pantocrator_(Sinai)#/media/File:Spas_vsederzhitel_sinay.jpg Among all the manifestations of Christ’s church, the Eastern Orthodox tradition has been the most gifted in the realm of visual symbolism. Beginning in the early centuries after Christ, Eastern iconographers crystallized doctrinal truths into pithy visual form. The Pantokrator icon (meaning “Ruler of All”), set the template…
December 10, 2021
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Tis the Season….to write letters of recommendation!

It’s that time of year again. Coming at the end of the long Fall semester, the holiday season is always a rough time for the college professor. There are term papers to read and grade, exams to write and grade, lab projects to check and grade. Did I mention the grading? But wait, there is…
December 9, 2021
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Guest Post – Hospitality and Nursing

In broad terms, hospitality can be defined as “the friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers” or “the quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way.”Dictionary.com, “hospitality,” 2021, https://www.dictionary.com/browse/hospitality The words hospitality and hospital are both derived from the Latin hospes, signifying a guest, stranger, or foreigner—describing…
December 8, 2021
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Rolling in the Deep: Adele and the Argument from Desire

“The main emotion of the adult American who has all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.” ]http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/18712/revolutionary-road John Cheever, novelist Like many fans of Adele, I tuned into her televised outdoor concert at the scenic Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles (Nov. 14, 2021).  With the iconic HOLLYWOOD sign the in the background,…
December 7, 2021
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Learning to Pray

The way we pray says quite a lot about us. Our prayers and the way we form them project a story about what ought to be. When we draw upon the public prayers of others and make our own prayers part of public discourse, prayer becomes one form of teaching and learning. I have been…
December 6, 2021
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Advent Meditation II: The Lady Listens

Simone Martini, The Annunciation with Sts. Margaret and Ansanus, early 14th c., Uffizi Gallery, https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/annunciation-with-st-margaret-and-st-ansanus Also, Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Annunciation, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1898, https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/104384 From the beginning of time, there were whispers. There was rumor even at the Fall, at the cracking of the world, when the face of God was hidden and the great rifting began. But…
December 3, 2021
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It’s a Matter of Trust

What makes for good leadership? There isn’t a straightforward answer. The study and practice of leadership is a bit like Baskin-Robbins with thirty-one or more different flavors. There is valid data to show that effective leaders lead from the front with charismatic personalities. Other, equally valid, studies show that effective leaders function more in the…
December 1, 2021
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Guest Post – Carbon’s Invitation to Wonder

“The heavens declare the glory of God.” With this proclamation David opens Psalm 19, which“celebrates the glory of God as manifested in his works” and “the knowledge of God which shines forth more clearly in his word,” as John Calvin says in his commentary. There is no doubt that this proclamation “includes by synecdoche the…
November 30, 2021